


To the Quick

by Yustiel



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Flashbacks, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 06:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11938395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yustiel/pseuds/Yustiel
Summary: Caught between the living and the dead, Niles begins to lose pieces of himself.





	To the Quick

**Author's Note:**

> Because most Tsubaki/Niles fics involve Tsubaki getting captured, here is an alternate where Niles is captured.

His captor speaks with a voice like spring water.

“It was your fault, y’know” He weaves strings of grass between his fingers, greener than anything Niles had ever seen. “You should’ve been more careful.” The twisting and turning of those strands against the stark sterile white of those gloves. The movement is hypnotizing.

“Where is he?” His captor feigns ignorance—or perhaps indifference.

“Out,” he says. “Port Dia, precisely twenty-six minutes past noon, two days ago. Where you told us he’d be.”

Niles imagines snapping that slender neck under his hands. To smash that skull until it is a smear of red. To feel those bones and that heart thrumming, steady in its panic, until that voice can do nothing but choke. It is a fantasy he will revisit, time and time again, fingers twitching in crude pantomime of those actions.

“Where is Lord Leo?” He is sun-bloated, light-fat, sun-gilt in a way never seen in Nohr’s ashen skies. When he leaves, Niles watches the dust motes part in his wake, as if he were too sacred to touch.

 

* * *

 

There was a ritual, of course. A long ornate blade, hilt inlaid with gems so dazzling he squinted at the sight. A useless, useless decoration of a weapon, brought out only for ceremony, to be worshipped and admonished.

Bile, acrid and bitter in the back of his throat. Leo drew the blade against his palm, and fought down the flinch that arose. Someone, Iago, a mage; they hummed of magics and unspoken threats. Of disapproval.

“Blood of my blood,” Leo spoke. A droplet ran down the edge. “Swear.”

The sword, a fortune, in his hands. How he would’ve killed for this just days ago. It would be easy. Plunge the blade into the boy’s chest until it pierced him through and through. How slow they’d be, lunging forward with their lances and tomes and axes; how late they’d be. First a cough (spraying blood), then crumbling (the stone of the castle floor, so cold), the great prince felled in the heart of their fortress; and him- reduced to nothing just moments later.

“I swear,” he said, and brought the blade down. Another mark for the works, another brand of loyalty. Leo nodded then, the faint hint of approval about him, and Niles was changed.

The prince’s hands were unscarred.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t learn their names until two days later. The boy he talks to, he’s too friendly- a disgusting display of naivety; the stench of stability rising off him like steam.

“Come here, boy,” tongue gliding over teeth. “Let me show you something.” Closer, closer; he can almost reach that neck through the gaps in the bars.

“Don’t talk to the captive, Hinata!”

“Sorry, Oboro.” Hinata. Oboro. The names churn in the pits of his stomach, repeating themselves into memory. She pulls him aside, murmurs impassioned warnings into his ear.

“I don’t want Hinata on guard duty again,” he hears her say. “I don’t trust him with that thing.” He decides right then that he likes her.

“Dear Oboro,” He says. “Leaving so soon? And here I thought we were just getting started.” The hatred is hard in her eyes. “Why don’t we have a little fun together?” Oh, she burns with disgust so prominent he can taste it, like excitement, on his tongue. It pulses in every beat of her veins.

“What’d they do to you, sweetie?” he croons. “Brother died in battle? Father betrayed you? Did they burn down your town? Come in during the night, caught you all unaware?”

“Rot in hell, Nohrian.” She doesn’t spit on him—disappointing, he thought her baser than this, voice aquiver with emotion. Yet her hands promise violence.

“Keep me company then, Oboro,” he says, and watches her shiver as he defiles her name.

 

* * *

 

They had other retainers, before. He caught whispers and rumors and often even whole words in the net of his ears. A graveyard for Xander, a plot for Camilla, the glimpses of servants with unfamiliar faces and strange, soft voices; all gone before he’d learned to leave Leo’s side.

“Where will I go when I die, then?” He asks, amusedly.

“With me,” Leo replied, a statement, not a reassurance. Perhaps he’d keep a memento of him. His bow, forever left in the drawing-room. His necklace forgotten on a nightstand. His still, severed head, preserved in a wreath of flowers in the crypt, to remain forever.

He’d hardly remembered the maid’s faces, until they grew scarred.

“Father has a temper.” Was all Leo said in explanation. “But he is a great ruler.” Justification. It would be weeks before he met Xander and understood.

“Leo’s new retainer,” the crown prince had greeted him, and that was all Niles needed to know. The flesh of Xander’s hand was marred again and again with innumerable cuts. He didn’t dare look into Xander's eyes. Didn’t dare speak back.

Father had a temper, indeed. It was written all across his face.

 

* * *

 

“A medicine man? Have they sent you to read my last rites?” The priest, whoever he was, smiled back at him.

“Hardly! And besides, nothing can ease your passage into death. It’ll be more painful then you could ever imagine.” What was this? A joker?

“I don’t need any medical attention.” Were they mocking him, then?

“Oh, rest assured, I wouldn’t have helped anyways.”

“Are you just here to play jailor-”

“Hush,” the man tells him. “You’re interrupting my silence.” It stuns him just enough to stop him.

“I’ll give you all the silence you want,” he begins, “If you tell me where Lord Leo is.”

“He’s not here.”

“He’s not here?” His voice almost betrays him in excitement.

“Yes, he’s not here. Do you see him? Hear him? There’s nobody else in here.”

“You mean…this room?”

“Of course I mean this room. Where else would ‘here’ be?” Thoughts of civility and cunning fly out his head. His fingernails leave crescent moon indents in the soft flesh of his palms.

“Why have you come?” He speaks quietly.

“Why does anything happen?” The man- Azama- asks back. “Why are we here? Why do we fight?” He shrugs, the very picture of languidness. “Don’t bother questioning why things happen—they happen simply because they do. And there’s no use in fighting it.”

“So what is it then? Fate? Don’t joke with me.”

“I am a spiritual man. I speak the truth, whatever it may be.”

“The truth seems awfully convenient for you.”

“Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. That’s just how things are.”

“What, so it was fate that sent me here? Fate, that I didn’t die in the ambush?”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Azama chides. “Do not mistake fate for luck.”

“And there’s a difference?”

“Of course, but I wouldn’t intend you to get it. See, it’s fate that your lord happened to be a Nohrian prince and therefore, our enemy.” He peers back at Niles, one steady black sliver of an eye. “It’s luck that you managed to live past your first breath.”

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t fast enough. First came the noise in the distance, the rhythmic flapping, too loud to be birds, too steady to be the sails; the beat-beat-beat growing louder and louder. A jolt of pain, burning in shock, and they were here, all and their swords and spears. His calf was bleeding.

“Lord Leo!” he had cried, the noise lost in the cacophony, the panic, the metallic taste on his tongue. A flume of flame- Odin, no doubt, extinguished by the serpents summoned by their scrolls. The familiar noise of Brynhildr, blooming—the scent of earth about him, their screams! The creaking yew of his bow, yet the arrows never quite fast enough.

They knew! But how? Who? A traitor in their ranks? A suicide mission? Did Garon set this up for them? Did he know? Their great beasts collapsed into the water. They fell, one by two by three but—oh, he felt weak. Their archers took aim and the bolts pierced his wrist.

“Lord Leo!” Odin’s voice in the distance. There was an incantation; figures above him, their backs to the sun. He couldn’t seem to lift his head.

_I’m sorry, Leo_ , he wanted to say, but they were upon him.

 

* * *

 

Outside, the faintest breeze upon the window-bars, spring’s pollen-laden kiss upon his skin. A heady scent, unfamiliar—and yet it reminds him of home.

“It’s almost spring,” Tsubaki says. In the field of grass-wheat and moss-stone, he smells like flesh. It is almost comforting.

“How long has it been?”

“Does it matter?” Tsubaki answers him. When had he entered? “You are here and nowhere else. What does it matter how much time has passed outside?”

“Answering my questions with questions. Can you think of nothing yourself?”

Tsubaki shrugs. “I’m showing you mercy.”

“Odd form of mercy, that. You Hoshidans were always backwards.”

“You of all people should know. Time does not move in a prison.” Yes, he knew, as much as anyone. He’d lost compatriots to it, after all. The own threat had lurked in all their ranks, among his own guild of thieves, unspoken of. Everyone knew—it was a better fate to die than to be lost. Is that why he had bowed his own head, that night?

“Ah. Digging up my sordid past, now? If you really wanted to know more about me, you should’ve just asked.” Tsubaki hums in response.

“You were a criminal,” he speaks steadily, as if holding pleasant conversation. “You fought and stole to survive, and circumstances found you in front of Prince Leo.”

“Circumstances. Is that what you’re calling it nowadays?”

“You served as retainer,” Tsubaki continued undeterred. “As best as you could. Evidently, not good enough.”

“Here to gloat? Not much fun across a set of bars. Why don’t you come in here, and we can talk face-to-face?”

“I’m merely stating the truth.” Tsubaki speaks so sweetly, smiles so warmly, that he might’ve been mistaken for an old friend. The insincerities are lost on Niles.

“Tell me, Tsubaki. Is there anything behind that countenance of any substance?”

“Plenty, though nothing that would interest you.”

“You’d be surprised, then. Let me pry you apart. I’ll decide for myself.” He looks as if he enjoys the thought.

“Maybe another day. I’m much too busy to play with you.”

“And yet, here you are. You don’t need to feign coyness around me.”

“Oh Niles,” he sighs. “You’re rather self-absorbed, aren’t you?”

“And you’re rather stupid, aren’t you?”

Tsubaki’s stance stiffens. The shrug of his shoulders is fluid in a way that promises practice. Perhaps he’s managed to strike a nerve. “You have nothing to offer us,” he says.

“Then why keep me here? Are you that enamored with me?”

“My lady loathes seeing an execution.”

“And of course, you have no will of your own.”

“I do not intend to betray her for your sake.”

“So you’d betray her for another’s?” Tsubaki shoots him a withering glance, but didn’t deign to dignify him with a response. “If you’re here, why don’t you entertain me for a bit? Have a little pity on the captive, why don’t you?”

“Pity? For you?” Tsubaki scoffs, but doesn’t pull away. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“So cruel, so cruel.” Niles steps forward, almost pressed against the bars. “And this is your infamous hospitality?”

“I’ll tell you a story, then. Will that please you?” He meets his gaze, fully, without flinching. Close enough to see the freckles on Tsubaki’s skin. Close enough to grab.

“Make it a good one.”

 

* * *

 

His lord struggled to wield a sword.

Perhaps it was the weight, or the heft, or the reach, but he was as clumsy with it as a babe with a rattle—a far cry from his dexterity with Brynhildr. He must’ve noticed Niles’ staring, as he startled suddenly, almost dropping the wooden practice sword.

“Niles! Good lord, tell me if you’re there!”

“My apologies, Lord Leo. I thought you wouldn’t want to be distracted.”

“Come out here. It makes me nervous to see you skulking around like that.”

“Would you like me to serve as a target? I could take a couple blows from a training sword.”

“What? No, of course not. Although…” Leo paused, and regarded him for a second. “Are you any good with a sword?”

“I’m afraid not. I have some proficiency with daggers, but I tend to stick to bows.”

“Perfect, then.” He pushed another well-worn training sword into Niles’ chest, not waiting for a reply. “Come spar with me.”

“Ah, are you certain? Surely there are others better served to-”

“Are you trying to avoid your duties, Niles? You pledged to serve me in any way I deemed fit.”

“Of course not, milord. I would be honored to be your partner.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Leo spoke, and raised his sword.

It was easy, almost comically so, to beat him. Perhaps he should have made it look harder, but his reach and previous experience with blades overpowered Leo easily, and although his lord wore his characteristic armor, the tap Niles landed on his ribs likely stung both his body and his ego.

“Forgive me, my lord, I didn’t mean to-”

“Nonsense!” Leo interrupted, with a smile that bode badly. “I asked you to spar with me, and you are only fulfilling your duties. This sword is bothering me, though,” he tossed it away without a second glance. “I’d like something lighter.”

“I’ll grab you another-”

“No need,” Leo interrupted yet again; and before Niles could take the excuse to run off, Leo conjured a thin blade of ice before him. Oh, that’s right—Leo preferred Brynhildr, but he had plenty of other spells in his arsenal as well. “Much better. Shall we go for another round, Niles?”

Although it was just a sliver, he could feel the unearthly chill even at a distance. Getting hit would sting something terrible.

“Of course, milord.”

 

* * *

 

The light is thick and viscous as it drips through the cast-iron bars of his prison and spills onto the stones below. Dazzling, he thinks. It shines on his skin; it burns in the most pleasant way. It begs him to ask.

“You’re dying!” Azama had told him cheerily.

“Huh. Something finally got to your brain?” Orochi asked.

“Hope it blinds you,” Oboro spat.

“Sun-sick,” Saizo finally growled. “You’re Nohrian.”

“Well. Yes, I would assume you already knew that.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Niles returns the murderous look with a smile. “You aren’t meant for Hoshido.”

“Clearly. So how about returning me? I fear I’ve overstayed your hospitality.” Saizo refuses to answer, as he is wont to do.

“Keep your head about you,” Saizo warns, and he too is gone.

The light takes him—slowly searing its way down to his bone, burning him up from the inside. It feels like fever heat and sickness; it feels like vibrant red and orange, the temperature of pain and dullness. He thinks he might die choking in his fabrics, head pressed against the stone floor, searching for some semblance of relief.

They take him away at night and he wakes to the brilliant glow of evening. It is a strange room, full of bamboo-paper panels and thin wood supports; it shudders in every gust of wind. There is salve on his skin—the pungent scent almost stings to bear.

“Nohrian,” Tsubaki speaks. He faces away, towards a curtained window. “Lady Sakura was very insistent you were healed. I advised her against it, but her empathy is boundless as ever.”

“What was it?”

“Sun-sickness, as Saizo said. Just as we cannot abide your darkness, the same goes for you in light.”

“And where am I now?”

“Where do you think?” Tsubaki replies. He pulls apart the curtains. “Welcome to Shirasagi castle.”

A land of green-and-golds. It is picturesque, blindingly and disgustingly so. The sun casts its great glow over everything, staining it all in horrid tones. Even now, still, he is drawn to it. Step closer, it tells him. Give yourself up and be consumed. Like ash to a spark. Niles, the west whispers. Niles.

There is a hand on his chest, holding him back. Tsubaki is alight in the glow of the setting sun, his scarlet hair ablaze. “Stop,” he says. “Remember yourself.”

“…Tsubaki.” The word is foreign on his tongue, he realizes, the phonemes alien. He speaks softly, almost pleadingly, but the shades and hues of the sunset leaves no room for pride. “Where is he?” There is pity in those eyes, he notices. From one station to another. From one master to the next.

“Like a moth to the light,” Tsubaki says. “Rest, Niles.” The curtain falls. The light is gone. The fire fades to embers.

 

Lucidity evades him. The days pass in moments and blanks; he spends them fitfully, tossing about in some omnipresent pain. There is a girl who frets above him.

“There must be something I can do,” she worries. His one good eye stares unseeingly at her.

“You’ve done all you can,” Tsubaki reassures her. “Besides, this condition is rare in Hoshido. There’s no way you could’ve known.”

“I hope so,” she trails. “I-I don’t want him to die.”

“He won’t. He’s too stubborn to. I’m sure of it.”

The next time he wakes, it is to a strange voice besides him.

“Hey now,” Azama greets him. “People said you were dying, so I came to get a look, first-hand. It’s quite boring, actually. You’re not even wailing.” The words seem to fall short, tumbling like flies as they bake in the heat of Niles’ skin. He stares, blankly. His head swims in oceans of imagined thought.

“When you die, try to leave a ghost behind, ok? I’ve never seen someone die of sun-sickness before!” He fades, again.

In his dreams, figures place their cool hands upon his brow, and he leans into their touch. They sing in soft, sullen voices stained lavender. Perhaps it is his hazy memories of his mother—a recollection conjured by his mind, desperate for reassurance (for she never sang him to sleep like this!); perhaps it is Lord Leo, acting in a manner contrast to his youth, offering some relief (it isn’t, he knows, his Lord never had a heavy hand for healing).

_I miss you_ , they say. He awakens with tears in his eyes.

 

There are no comforts of warmth or relief when he awakens. His throat is dry and sandy and his skin is clammy with sweat; the silence of the halls sounds like ringing in his ears. The morning breeze blows cold on his skin—he is in their garments now, he notices. His last mementoes of home, gone.

The door slides open easily. There are no guards to stop him, no presence of people at all. The castle seems lifeless; a slumbering beast. He steals away barefoot in the morning pale.

Where to go? South, to search for dungeons? No, no, his cell must’ve been on ground floor, he recalls the tufts of grass springing up between the patchwork masonry of his floors. Up, then? A prisoner’s bedroom? But the lay of the castle is unfamiliar, and he is likely to be found. The only way clear is west, then. Down the wooden hallways (the black outlines on the doors all point in one direction). Out into the garden walls (grass, so green, wetting his ankles with morning dew). Through the stone steps (lain so carefully, a deliberate path). Into the streets, past the alleys, emerging in the market squares, disappearing in the throngs and masses so unfamiliar in their vibrancy.

They stare. They whisper strange words as he walks past, murmuring in tongues unknown to him. They must know him for a foreigner—it’s as clear as the color of his skin. Perhaps, he thinks, if he runs far enough, he’ll make it out. He’ll escape the markets, pass the canyon, scale the wall, and…. And then what? Drag his tail back to Krakenburg? Maybe Leo had managed to escape, after everything. Maybe he’d find his lord safe and sound back home. And maybe he’d get murdered by a bandit caravan a mile outside of the Great Wall.

The crowds thin, the voices fade; he finds himself at a precipice. A cliff. Shirasagi scrapes the clouds, he realizes. There was no hope from the start. That’s why they let him go.

The wall stretches for miles and miles below, horizon to horizon; the march of soldiers is visible and audible even from this great distance. And everything, everything, is stained a horrible, awful, clear white and red and blue and green and-

“There’s no way you could make it, even if you tried,” Tsubaki’s voice sounds before him. Of course. He should’ve known—there was no way they’d let him leave so easily. Too blinded by his thoughts to notice. “No one is willing to give passage to a Nohrian. They’ve been avoiding you on our commands.”

“I don’t intend to bow, Tsubaki.” Niles does not turn to face him, enthralled as he is by the sights below. They look like ants from here, he thinks, from this view of kings. “And I don’t intend to rot.”

“We know, Niles. You forget our station as well.”

“So what, then? I refuse to turn traitor.” He might be able to take him. He’d have the element of surprise, and they are so close to the cliff face already—a lunge, a shove! All it would take, and his death would have meaning.

“The prince called for your death. My lady, however, begs otherwise. She decrees you are harmless; pitiable, even.”

“Pitiable?” He can’t help but laugh. “And you corrected her?”

“I follow my lady’s orders, whatever they may be.” Unhappy compliance disguises itself well on Tsubaki’s face. “She remains convinced. You are to be given certain amenities. A bedroom, for one, and limited access to the castle grounds—the base floor and the gardens, specifically.”

“And what do you expect of me? To act as an obedient little chained dog? I still have eyes and teeth. And I owe you no allegiance.”

“You can do no harm on our land, Niles. We have made sure of that.”

“Have you really? I’ll be the judge of that,” Niles says, but he steps back all the same.

 

* * *

 

They had been careless—leaving documents overturned, drawers ajar, dust unsettled. Child’s play, really. He caught them easily, with nary a struggle.

“Milord, I bring you a gift,” Niles flourishes with a bow. “What shall I do with him?” Trussed up like a suckling pig. He takes a moment to admire his own handiwork.

Leo regards them both casually, almost cruelly.

“The prisons? The gallows? Stockades, milord? They’ve been collecting dust.”

“Bring him with us,” he says simply. “I mean to take you out, anyways.”

“Where are we headed?”

“To the swamps of Nohr. Do you know the place?” Yes, of course he knew. Who didn’t? The core of Nohr’s forests was as much myth as it was a graveyard. There were stories mothers told their children, fables passed between thieves. To find oneself in the heart of darkness was tantamount to death. The very location seemed wrong, unnatural somehow, as if something had twisted the laws of the world ever so slightly, as if some cruel creator had funneled his frustrations into the land itself. But nonetheless, they went.

It was far, he knew that, and yet the forest seemed to appear before he expected, looming up like a great maw before them. The ground turned from gorse to fern to mud; his feet sank into the soft earth. There seemed to be a threat here, a warning—the air itself stank the sickly-sweet of rot and evergreen. His stomach churned.

The magelight glinted white off the cruel spokes of Leo’s armor as the light of the sky faded before them. There was nothing in Niles’ world now save the steady sound of footsteps, the ground giving way beneath, and the cold, stark light as it illuminated their path.

“What are you thinking?” Perhaps he noticed Niles’ staring, or thought his silence odd. The sound of his voice had startled Niles, but the words were stolen away by the shadow.

“That you look like a will of the wisp, milord,” Niles' whispers were so clear in the stagnant air. “Here to lead me astray.”

“You hardly need to fear that from me.”

“I would follow you regardless.” Leo made a noise of dismissal, or perhaps disapproval, but he said nothing more. Niles does not ask about those who were lost before him. His master is so confident in his stride—gaze fixed, pace even—as the bones crack underneath the hooves of his horse and the path narrows from a field to a strand and they are forced to fall in line.

The captive does not struggle as they unfix him from the horse. It is almost impressive, he thinks, that cold hatred in those eyes.

“Well?” Leo asks. “Go on. Run.” They hesitate—considering their chances, he knows. Eyes darting to Leo’s neck. His bow is nocked in preparation; he almost longs for an excuse to use it. But they run.

“So we’re freeing him? Just like that?”

“He won’t make it out.” Leo speaks from experience. He has seen it before. “He’ll grow tired. He looks for patches of light through the canopy for relief. He’ll think he’s found one.”

“There is no light. Not this deep.”

“The forest knows his face.” Niles remembers, too. They will falter. They will tire unexpectedly fast, and come to rest in the shelter of the oaks. They will lean their head back against the worn bark and find it comfortingly warm, and they will not rise. “This is what traitors deserve.”

“Worse, milord. They deserve worse.”

 

* * *

 

It is a barrier that prevents him from raising a hand, from making his last stand with a butter knife and a prison dirk, he finds out. The magic creeps into his marrow, presses against his spine at every thought of violence until it stings and burns to bear. He spends his days lounging in the sun, lingering in the hallways, wasting the time blind.

Azama gives him peaches, startlingly white, nothing like the red-and-gold of Nohr’s own, but the juice running down his chin is just as sweet.

“Don’t throw away your life,” he says. “Or do. I don’t particularly care one way or another.” The man has no combat ability; he knows to wield a festal and nothing else.

“And how do you suppose I’d do that? I can hardly take a piss unless your priestess allows it.”

“There’s no such thing as certainty, definitely not with magic.”

“Are you advocating for me to find a loophole so I can slaughter your royals in the night? I never pinned you as one for treason.”

“Oh, I don’t mean our barriers, of course! Those are foolproof. But you’re a thief, right? There’s always a way in, as long as you find it.” He takes the knife, delicately slices the peach into thin, even pieces and spears the pit on the end of the blade. Niles bites into the flesh of the fruit savagely in response.

“You’re giving me quite the mixed response here. Would your lord be pleased that you’re entertaining a convict?”

“Of course not! Who in their right minds would?” Azama leaves him with that. Niles bares his teeth in the semblance of a smile and sweeps the knife into his sleeve.

Tsubaki stops him between the gardens, the trees in full summer bloom, the grass worn to slivers by the treading of feet.

“Oboro has another complaint against you.”

“Oh? What is it this time?”

“That you’re an uncouth and rabid animal, a threat to us all. So, the usual. I’d advise against harassing her again; Prince Takumi is already barely tolerating your presence.”

“Please. I’ve seen your Takumi and he’s nothing to be afraid of.” Tsubaki smiles at that, though he hides it quickly.

“Well, do so for my sake, then. They’ve started calling you my prisoner.”

“Yours? How intriguing. And why do they do that?”

“Why do you think?” He asks, and settles in one of the garden’s many benches, gesturing for Niles to join him. “Are you enjoying your stay?”

“Making it sound like a vacation, and not a prison? I suppose it’s as gilded a cage as any,” but he sits alongside him. Tsubaki pulls out what must be his lunch, wrapped delicately in some multi-patterned cloth, before offering Niles some piece of a hideous green vegetable. “…And this is?”

“A type of melon. Try it.”

It is beyond disgusting. Intensely bitter, with a vile taste that almost sends him reeling. “Are you trying to poison me?”

Tsubaki, obviously amused, eats piece after piece without complaint. “Call it an acquired taste,” he says.

“And you say this is a fruit?”

“I said it was a type of melon. Bitter melon, to be precise. Never said anything about fruit.”

Niles smiles and imagines plunging his butter knife into Tsubaki’s thigh.

 

* * *

 

He knew Iago as much as anyone could know the royal advisor. Leo’s tutor in magics and subtlety was as potent a sorcerer as any he’d ever seen; the very fabric of it seemed to rise off his skin in rolling vapors.

“Focus, prince,” he circled like a serpent about to strike. “Do not falter.” Again. Again. Again. Again! “Not good enough, boy! You would be long dead!” There is frustration written in every smooth plane of Leo’s face. “You cannot expect Brynhildr to save you!”

It was a shame that Iago was so cunning and yet so blind. That he groveled for the king’s attention so. All it would take is a kind word, a soft voice, and Leo would be his. Didn’t he realize? How eager the prince was for this attention, how starved for this approval. Even Niles’ words, those of a lowly thief, still inspired some affection. And yet-

“His talent with magic is an anomaly,” Beruka had told him, somewhere in between the castle and the courtyards. “I’ve never seen a sorcerer able to wield staves before.” And Niles had to agree somehow; for all his rudimentary understanding, even he knew.

“If you care at all!” Iago spoke harshly; bitterly and yet somehow not unkindly. “Let no one know,” and with that, the curse fell upon him.

Oh, his knees gave out. Oh, his head swam. Everything bloomed in the most brilliant, blinding light; halos burst before the sorcerers’ heads.

“What have you done?” Leo demanded.

“A curse, boy, nothing more. Now free him. Or do you not know how?” The light intensified, it hollowed his head and hallowed his bones. Those gasps—they were his, he realized. His chest burned.

“Well? Dispel it! Or do you want your precious thief to die?” He heard the rush of wind, smelled the burst of grass, heard the crackling of flames, but he saw nothing but light. Was he truly dying? It was nothing like how he expected, nothing like what he deserved. If he had the capacity to, he would’ve laughed.

“Enough, Iago! You’ve made your point!” A hint of desperation in his voice, and distantly, in some foreign golden land, Niles realized that concern was for him. Pause. The metallic promise of a nosebleed in the back of his throat. “Please!”

“Pathetic,” Iago said, and for all of Leo’s anger, he could still feel the helplessness that circled him; a mocking witness of a vulture overhead. “How useless. Your father would be ashamed.” The lights dimmed, and Niles collapsed back into his body in one painful, solid heap.

And later, when Leo bandaged the lesions on Niles’ skin, he could feel the odd longing—like so many unspoken words—nestled beneath his lord’s breast.

 

* * *

 

From his perch on high, he can see the knights training in the courtyard below. There is a woman with sharp eyes and sagging skin, who nocks the bow with practiced ease, enough to make him ache with familiarity. She sees him from above and smiles with the scar carved in her brow, her unspoken threat hits the bulls-eye. Another shock of red, far too vibrant, tears apart a training dummy with ferocity that impresses even him.

He watches until the sun is red and ripe in the horizon and the last figure comes, nocking a bow with amateur precision.

“You’ll get nowhere like that,” he calls, and watches the figure flinch. He smiles and waves; Tsubaki returns half his greeting.

He makes his way downstairs, past the sneers of the prince’s ninjas, the whispering of the ladies-in-waiting, further down and down to the training yard. The castle’s steps have long become familiar. The realization is almost shameful to bear.

“You’re not supposed to be upstairs,” Tsubaki greets him.

“And you’re not supposed to shoot with your stance so wide, but I don’t see it stopping you.”

“Here just to critique me? You should take up a hobby, Niles.”

“And take time away from you? Never. Pass me a bow.” And when Tsubaki hesitated- “Don’t you trust your priestess’s little barrier? I can’t harm you.” Surprisingly, it works.

It’s lighter than his—or any of Nohr’s—bows. But it is a welcome weight in his hand, a welcome resistance pushing against his draw. The string slaps his hand on the release (novice mistake, he curses) but his aim is true. His wrist stings. His arms shake much more than they should.

“Impressive,” Tsubaki notes. He watches, passively, as Niles nocks and fires again.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” on your men. Again and again he draws, and hits the target every time, as out of practice as he is. The last arrow he arms and points at Tsubaki.

“Don’t joke, Niles.” But he frowns nonetheless. “You can’t fire it at me.”

“Your little magic trick works; I’ll give it that. I can’t hurt you even if I wanted. But,” he draws back further; Tsubaki tenses as the string does. “What if I didn’t want to?”

“The fact that you’re holding an armed bow to my head begs to differ.”

“Observant as ever. But I’m speaking of accidents. If I just happened to fire, and you just happened to be in the way, your barrier wouldn’t stop me.”

“And you just so happened to fire in my exact direction?”

“It’s a training ground. Accidents happen all the time.” Tsubaki matches his glee with a strained smile.

“Niles-” he begins, and Niles lets the arrow fly—cutting just above Tsubaki’s shoulder, stirring the edges of his air, embedding into a wooden post behind them.

“Lucky for you, I still want to stab you in the back. So,” he hands the bow back, Tsubaki takes it wordlessly. “Keep relying on your barrier, why don’t you?” And as loathe as he is to admit it, magic is not all that held his hand back.

He turns away and steps, almost angrily, away from the training range.

 

* * *

 

He had tried to teach Niles some magic, the most simple of rudimentary cantrips; a burst of energy, the merest glimmer of fire. He had recited the words, gifted the leather-bound frames, gone through the motions, and watched as Niles had failed to conjure anything resembling a spark.

“It’s a skill like any other. Simply…Practice more.”

“I’m afraid I’m not as gifted as you are, milord. Perhaps I should stick to the bow, instead.”

“Gifted,” his master laughs, and it is not without bitterness. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Niles—I was never gifted with anything.” With a sweep of his arm, Brynhildr blooms for him, the sweet smell of new growth perfuming the air. It contradicts his words, Niles thinks.

“Then why pick up the tome? Why not the sword, or the lance?”

Brynhildr’s leaves yellow and wither in seconds, falling off the branch and dissolving into ash. “Xander got there first.” Leo says. Then- “I’ll tell you another secret. I’m no good at healing. I can’t mend a simple papercut. I know how, of course—the words, the method, the pathway—I should be able to—but it never works. Elise can sing you back from the brink of death, and all I would be able to do is summon the wood for your coffin.”

He’d had to slit a man’s throat before he could make a sound; he’d had to carve the infection out of someone’s flesh with a warm knife and a vial of whiskey. He’d had to live, for days, on nothing but grass and rainwater—but in all his years, he’d never had to console another.

“You can kill, Lord Leo. Let the others heal for you. What good is closing wounds when the source still exists?”

Leo snorts, snaps the book and line of thought shut with an audible thud. “Perhaps you should pick up the rod, then. Isn’t it your job to protect me?”

“I’ll ask the infirmary for a spare.”

“Pack your bags,” Leo dismisses him. “We leave for Dia in the morning.”

It takes him the entire journey— hours and hours spent in his tent pouring over the scrolls and books and the welts on his body until finally, he manages to finally, finally, seal the skin back together. It fills him with an odd sense of pride. Warm and expectant—because, pathetically, he expects Leo to praise him. How well he’s conditioned his hounds!

In the end, he could’ve brought the dead back to life, and it would’ve have changed a thing.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take much to escape, truth be told. The walls are paper thin and the locks are brittle. There are no cuffs binding him. Did they mean for him to escape? Or did they think him weak?

The castle is alien in the daylight, but the moon washes everything in familiarity. He has long memorized the sound of footsteps across the floorboards; he follows his breadcrumb trail out of his room, up the stairs, where the servants lie. Another floor up, to the royal retainer’s hall, and yet another would lead to the prince and princess’s bedrooms, where their vulnerable backs are turned and eyes closed in slumber. It would be so easy to pry into their bedroom, to smother them in their own bed, as silent as-

The floor creaks. Their ninjas and mages still patrol at this hour, he knows; and they would not hesitate to strike him down. At the foot of the stairs, it is almost quiet enough to hear their soft breaths, the rhythmic exhalations, fitful tossing. Someone rises from their bed before Niles finally steps away from the foot of the stairs.

Their silhouettes are cast against the thin paper doors. The idle curve of someone’s wrist, the single flyaway strands of hair. He passes each door, each possibility, until finally, he comes across the last. The shadows grow familiar.

He is asleep. Blissfully unaware, as Niles slides the door closed behind him. Stirring only when Niles comes to kneel over the bed, cracking one eye open, far too late, as Niles puts his hands around Tsubaki’s throat.

 

* * *

 

He had never met the king personally; Leo had never let him, for reasons he understood.

"Father is-" He paused. "-A kind man. But even his kindness has limits. Do not speak to him. Do not ask him any questions, do not volunteer any answers. Say nothing about yourself." He grips Niles's wrists with an odd desperation, a quiet urgency. "Do you understand? Look at me."

"I understand, my prince."

"No jokes, Niles. No theatrics. He will have Iago and Hans at his side; do not address them either." A mounting panic, smothered with unsteady hands. Leo clutched Brynhildr tightly, enough that the gauntlets dug into the skin. "Be on your best behavior."

"Of course." He tugged on his cuffs, straightened his collar, leaned over to brush a speck off Leo's mantle. "And if they ask me anything?"

"Make it up. As long as you don't attract attention."

His lord loathed to show fear, but it was palpable even know, overpowering in consistency, a crescendo reaching the peak.

The doors part.

"My son," the voice called. "Listen closely. I have a special task for you."

 

* * *

 

“What meaning is there,” Tsubaki speaks, and Niles can feel the vibrations underneath his palms—like so much sand between his fingers. “In your life?”

He cups his hands together until his skin turns white from the pressure, but the grains still slip through the gaps.

“Whatever meaning Lord Leo grants me.”

“And if he were to abandon you?”

“Then I will take my leave.”

“And if he were to die because of you?”

“Whatever punishment he would deem fit.”

He is a child, carving up the half-eaten corpses of field mice left scattered in the garbage and refuse of the alleyways. The entrails glint against the dull blade of his knife.

“Did he care for you?” His voice is almost a whisper; his hands reach up to cup Niles’ own against his neck. The skin of his thumbs brush against the veins in Niles’ wrists, feather-light.

“For his own sake, I hope not.”

“Do you want to know where he is?”

He is a child again, clutching his hollow stomach against his spine, feeling his muscles and organs twist like drying worms. The moon lies witness to his misfortunes.

_Of course. Of course._

He does not speak.

“Lord Leo is-” Tsubaki starts. Niles tightens his grip just enough to cut off those words. He will die here, in the gardens of the east, without another word from home, without anyone knowing. He is a child and he curses the world for its cruelty.

To be alive, and useless; or to be dead, and regretful?

Tsubaki opens his mouth to speak, and Niles presses hard against his throat. His long hair is undone and splayed beneath him, disruly, almost black in the limited light. It is as unmade as he has ever seen him.

“Don’t speak,” Niles hisses, but his hands betray him. So he lets go, tugs his wrists out of Tsubaki’s grip, and silences him again with a harsh kiss.

 

* * *

 

It is the moonlight that emboldens him, he thinks, as he parts his lips and asks (with a voice far quieter than he intended, and yet all too loud), “What would you give for it all to be over?”

“Anything,” Leo responds, but his eyes are not upon him, and he knows the prince is far off elsewhere—a cold summer day in the courtyard, his siblings around. His father had laughed, “ _Come, little Leo_ ,” and the sunlight coursed weak yet willingly through the bones of the castle.

“Anything,” Leo spoke again, but he was far gone.


End file.
